


i'm not your protagonist (i'm not even my own)

by Tenors_only_gang



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, but make it a character study from alex's pov, no slash and no non-canon violence, this is basically the quackity and schlatt fight over the white house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:47:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27493687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenors_only_gang/pseuds/Tenors_only_gang
Summary: It takes Quackity the destruction of his White House to fully process just how exploited his labor is.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Jschlatt
Comments: 10
Kudos: 114





	i'm not your protagonist (i'm not even my own)

“Don’t be a little bitch.” 

“We’re not fucking taking the White House down!”

Quackity seethes through gritted teeth. He’s clenching his fists at his sides, not an unfamiliar expression considering the amount of frustration dealing with his superior sparks in him, and allows himself––just for a second––to entertain the thought of smacking the sneer off of Schlatt’s face as the man curls a pair of iron bars in his hands like they’re dumbbells.

It’s an urge he has to suppress more and more as of late.

As Schlatt continues to pull the bars to his chest, counting off repetitions as if they were the words of a formal decree, Quackity’s thoughts race through his head, slightly erratic, and he feels his breathing quicken as his heart pounds. He begins to pace in front of the stone building he’d once prided himself on constructing with his own two hands.

Finally, after seemingly deciding he’d milked enough aggravation out of his vice president with the makeshift exercise equipment, Schlatt drops the bars to the ground and shifts his attention towards Quackity once more. Standing in front of a hastily-set crafting table in front of the structure, he directs bitter words towards his subordinate.

“I have to make a fucking pickaxe now. Because you’re being too much of a bitch.”

Fuck if that wasn’t a name Quackity was tired of hearing.

The vice president’s hands move almost automatically: he pulls a couple of signs from his inventory and places them in front of the doors––something, anything, to block the area. He just needs a minute to think, a minute he knows Schlatt would never so much as offer him. 

“Don’t fucking take it down, I’m not gonna fucking take it down,” Quackity shouts, watching in horror as Schlatt begins plunging a pickaxe into the stone bricks of the structure, “Stop, stop, fucking stop! What the fuck are you doing?”

Schlatt bulldozes over his protests without care, humming and laughing and degrading his subordinate remorselessly, leaving Quackity nothing but the ability to babble angry, inarticulate, protests. 

There’s no use, not like this. When it's a game of words, of mudslinging and petty, baseless verbal combat, attempting to get a word in over Schlatt is nearly impossible. The man is uncomfortably good at that––at removing the structure and framework from a composed, civil conversation until only chaos remains.

Schlatt was perfectly content with operating in chaos, so long as he was the one orchestrating it.

Another topic change pulls the rug from beneath Quackity, and he’s rolling his eyes as the president boasts about his imaginary gains.

“They call me the rep man," Schlatt says with a shit-eating grin, "because that’s all I do these days.”

“No one fucking calls you that,” Quackity grumbles, his words already drowned out, another reminder of the futility of this argument. Schlatt’s voice is triumphant, aggressive, and Quackity swears if he has to hear another word of it he’s going to break out in hives.

To someone not accustomed to Schlatt’s manner of speech, he knows it’s easy to assume the man’s lost it. Just a senile alcoholic, one could call him. Openly claims to use drugs, drinks on his public podium, trips and stumbles while his vice president and former secretary of state are forced to carry his weight towards the stage.

 _Yay, Our leader…_ Quackity remembers Fundy muttering, as Schlatt burped out his announcement of the Manberg festival, and the vice president can’t remember an occasion when he was more tired.

But every bit of this, every irrelevant detail and flex, is conscious. Under the skin of a one-dimensional comic book villain is a sinisterly intelligent dictator. Schlatt, written off as senile or crazy, can get away with anything––why dwell on a public execution when the president can barely walk straight? This, as with everything else the president does, is a dominance play. Who can talk faster, louder, who can derail a conversation the farthest, talk circles around the other, if only to render an opponent speechless?

And since when was Quackity an opponent, anyways?

“We share these fucking decisions!” Quackity yells over Schlatt’s ranting, pulling a pickaxe from his inventory if only to dig his nails into the hilt, his hands starting to sting from the force with which his nails bore into his palm.

“Come on, you’re not enjoying this? You’re not tellin’ me you’re having fun right now?” Schlatt laughs, his pickaxe combing through the stone bricks as if they were made of flimsy plastic. “Because I’m having fun!”

Hastily picking cobblestone from his hotbar, Quackity races to place the blocks in Schlatt’s path.

He expects the dull pain in his side to follow, but it still knocks the wind from his lungs. He feels the sharp stone tool dent his chestplate and shudders, stepping back as the onslaught continues. The president steps forward, backing the two into the lobby of the building, cool air blowing in from the gaping hole where the front door once stood. Quackity tries to focus on this instead of the searing discomfort that blooms from his waist, Schlatt’s pickaxe finding a mobility gap in the armor. It isn’t the first time Schlatt’s made Quackity bleed, and it likely won’t be the last. 

Quackity allows himself to be backed into a room underneath the staircase leading to the presidential suite, and for the first time that night, he falls silent. Leaning against a chest in the corner of the room for comfort, grimacing, he allows Schlatt to say his piece uncontested. 

“ _Oh, we’re gonna rebuild it out of dirt and stone_ ,” Schlatt whines mockingly, his voice pitching up as he poorly imitates the vice president, “ _we’re gonna rebuild it out of dirt and stone_ ––you fucking idiot. Get fucking mining.”

Quackity flinches as the door slams on his face, staring at the vacant spot Schlatt left for just a moment before following his president out obediently. 

_Get fucking mining._

With those words, with the violent reinforcement, the vice president bitterly remembers his place. At least, as cabinet bitch, he does his job well. Still silent, Quackity raises his pickaxe once more, destroying blocks of polished diorite lining the staircase. 

Not allowing himself to think about the burning at his waist, the insults slung in his direction, the failed reach for autonomy he’d just tried to grasp at, the man shut his brain off. Autopilot suits his position much better.

“God, I can’t take these fuckin' idiots!” Quackity thinks he hears, “who did I get to run my country with me?”

But through the fog of his brain, Quackity only half-processes the words, as if he were underwater. 

Schlatt had never _gotten_ anyone to run his country with him. This isn’t _his_ country, not until he stole it from its people, not until he dethroned its rightful rulers.

Yet that was neither here nor there, and Quackity wordlessly destroys stone brick after stone brick as his president spoke on.

“Fuckin’–– bunck of betas, bro. Hit the gym. Pick up some weights. Pick up a goddamn football for once.”

Still mining, Quackity timidly spoke again, his voice hushed in both pain and fear. “Stop. I’m serious.”

“Shut up. Get some puss bro. You ever get laid before?” Schlatt asks, and again seeming to revel in the uncomfortable silence from his subordinate, returns to barking orders. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Help me mine this shit. I’m in charge. _I’m in charge._ ”

Hearing that piece of rhetoric, a three-word reminder slung at him countless times, Quackity bristles. There’s no more attempt to hide it. Schlatt’s ego, his power, is absolute. Quackity recalls the dozens of times he’d been spoken over, been made fun of and bullied and _used_ , all at least with the benefit of knowing that he wasn’t among the commoners of Manberg. He could rationalize that he was the vice president. As much as Schlatt hurt him, both physically and emotionally, he was at least promised keep in his own nation. Safety, a warm bed, a leadership position. He’d set out to resist tyranny under Wilbur, and as long as he’d been vice president, he reasoned, this was the price for that luxury.

But, obviously enough, he was played.

“No, no, we share these fucking decisions together. You’re president, I’m fucking vice president. _You’re president, I’m fucking vice president_.”

He says it twice, a prompting less to Schlatt and more to himself.

“You squat two-hundred pounds at the gym, two-hundred goddamn minimum, okay? You know what I see Quackity, even with netherite armor because it makes you look _big_ and _strong_ , you know what I see? Flatty patty. _Flatty patty_. That’s what I see. With full netherite armor, and you know why? Because you don’t hit the goddamn gym.”

_Flatty patty._

Quackity doesn’t know what else he expected. 

Certainly not a more rational answer than that.

“Why don’t you just fucking do it yourself,” Quackity finally answers, “since you’re Mr. Fucking Big Man.”

He throws his pickaxe at Schlatt’s feet, pushing the president back as the tool clatters to the floor.

The president sneers as he announces a refusal, his stone pickaxe raining shards of shattered glass, powdering his suit in glittering fragments. Despite wearing armor, despite standing a few feet away, Quackity flinches as the pieces fall to the ground. Schlatt seems unbothered, continuing to destroy the building even as sparkling bits cling to his eyelashes.

“When my rogue, in-home gym equipment got delivered two hours ago, I made myself a promise. I said I wasn’t gonna take orders from some low-T, soyboy beta males––”

“You are literally in fuckin’ power because of my votes. No, you’re in my–– You would have no fuckin’ power if it weren’t for me. You used my fuckin’ votes to come to power.”

 _You’re in my power_ , Quackity wants to say. It’s on the tip of his tongue, a simple phrase that doesn’t quite sound right and yet makes more sense than any emotional, convoluted, speech he could give his superior.

It’s all he can think as Schlatt ascends the stairs, as he destroys the bed of the suite, _the bed that Quackity had laid for him_ , as he breaks the windows and the pieces rain over the vice president’s netherite armor.

“You know what I hear you doing Quackity, you know what I hear you fuckin’ doing? I hear you crying about it!”

“I’m not fucking crying about it.”

That much is true. Quackity is past the point of tears, a level of exhaustion that just a few months prior he wouldn’t even think possible, and the stinging in his side and the clattering of broken glass and the ringing in his ears are nothing to him anymore. 

“I’m not crying about it, I just think it’s fucking stupid, why don’t we share these decisions together? Why don’t we share these fuckin' decisions together?”

The vice president watches as Schlatt begins to grip at his pickaxe once again, and past the point of caring, he follows his president up the stairs. The wind is blowing harder now, and the cold stone of his netherite armor chills his skin as he stands nearly toe-to-toe with the man before him.

“You fucking know what, Schlatt,” Quackity says, through a grimace of a smile, eyes squinted in rage as he pays no attention to Schlatt speaking over him, “you fucking know what? You are literally in my fuckin’ power. You are in power because of me.”

“ _Oh, you’re in my fuckin’ power_ , shut up bro.” Schlatt once again pitches up his voice, and Quackity, no longer concerned with civility, scoffs. “I’m the president. You wouldn’t have a bit of power if it wasn’t for me. We ran under _my_ fucking ballot.”

As Schlatt once again began curling weights into his hands, Quackity started towards the exit. What more was there to do but leave the building, if he was never to receive the respect he commanded? 

“I’m not gonna do this shit anymore. Since day fucking one–– you remember the meeting we had where you didn’t fucking respect my decisions? I’m fucking done here. I was the vice president, but you can find a new vice president.”

“Get the fuck off of my property.”

“You are the worst dictator. I ran against Wilbur to prevent dictatorship.”

“I’m doing this shit on two and a half hearts of health because I can’t get any goddamn help around here from ungrateful, soyboy, betas! You do that again and I’m gonna start gettin’ angry. What happened to mi casa es su casa, bro?”

“That’s not even a thing, you don’t even know Spanish.”

“I know exactly what I’m talkin’ about, and you know _nothing_.”

And if this is how it’s going to be, if this is how Schlatt wants this to end, Quackity supposes, he might as well reparate at least a fraction of his pain, of his suffering under Schlatt’s establishment. A look of determination comes over his eyes, and he bites his lip as he pulls his bow from over his shoulder and trains an arrow on the president, his target still hacking away at the hand-laid stone of the white house bricks. 

In the back of his mind, Quackity feels a bitter sense of deja vu.

On the day of the festival, what might as well have been a few days prior, Schlatt had his bow pointed at the audience, an arrow pulled against the taut string of his weapon. Quackity died that day, one instance of many, and no one in the audience batted an eye. When Tubbo was executed only half an hour or so later, the whole nation in uproar, Quackity tried not to dwell on the difference in reaction. His life was for entertainment, after all, and he was a free jester for the rest of the SMP to toss around like a rag doll.

But the memory ends, perhaps thankfully, when Quackity watches as Schlatt turns to face the vice president from over his shoulder, a cocky grin on his face. 

“Yeah, rack that bow. You’re too much of a pussy to even do it, it’ll kill me in one blow. But oh, no, I can’t do it, I’m Quackity, I’m Quackity, I don’t know what sex feels like––”

_Ding._

The tone plays as Quackity’s arrow meets its mark, and as Schlatt’s voice is finally silenced. He can almost hear the president’s yelling in the back of his mind, swearing and kicking and screaming, and Quackity wastes no time running from the scene of the crime. Someone will find Schlatt’s body soon, the sun already rising in the east, and Quackity doesn’t want to be around when the dictator is roused. 

“Fuck you. I’m out. Go fuck yourself.” He mutters, running towards the woods, a baked potato already in his mouth as he feels the wound on his waist mending itself.

**Author's Note:**

> i literally can't stop thinking about Quackity's character arc in the SMP its SO good and his roleplaying is so much fun to watch. Here's a playlist to think about Quackity to:  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4krkw1YcEK3HRjVxYC8fAi?si=bD2KnveSST-KKMcIYipTRQ


End file.
